He said he was open to the idea of creating a US sovereign wealth fund, but said the US needed to get control over short-term deficit growth first.
The high level of US deficits means that there is less capacity to borrow heavily to combat a crisis, he said, citing examples of the 1930s Great Depression, World War II and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
“Treasury – along with the whole of government and Congress – has used its borrowing capacity to save the union, save the world, and save the American people,” Bessent said. “What we currently have now, we would be hard pressed to do the same.”
In prepared remarks released on Wednesday night, Bessent laid out a vision for “a new economic golden age” that included prioritising strategic investments that grow the US economy and making permanent Trump’s 2017 individual and small business tax cuts that are due to expire on Dec 31, 2025.
“We must secure supply chains that are vulnerable to strategic competitors, and we must carefully deploy sanctions as part of a whole-of-government approach to address our national security requirements,” Bessent also said in the remarks.
